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 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'First day of the term',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		The school announced today that based on feedback they&apos;ve received, they&apos;ve given their classroom website a new look.
		The new layout is terrible though.
		First off, the website that you enrol for courses at is a separate website than the one you take the courses at.
		It&apos;s always been that way.
		However, it used to be that the link to the enrolment website was visible on the classroom website without first logging in.
		Now, not so much.
		Now, you have to log in, get the link, then log into the other site.
		So if you&apos;re enrolling in courses or checking on enrolment requests, you have to log in twice for no good reason.
		Secondly, the upper navigation menu doesn&apos;t function any more.
		It used to have several categories laid out, and hovering over one showed you the options.
		Now, there&apos;s just one menu item labelled &quot;MENU&quot;, and hovering and clicking both have no effect.
		It must&apos;ve been a $a[CSS]-based menu before and a JavaScript-based one now.
		As I&apos;ve said many times in the past, the school&apos;s website is so broken that I have to disable JavaScript when school is in session to get the school website to stop eating my coursework submissions, so I&apos;ve got to choose now between a working menu or not having to type everything repeatedly.
		I&apos;ve got to go with not typing everything repeatedly.
		I wasn&apos;t going to say anything to the school, but I just got so mad that I ended up responding to their announcement email anyway:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Hello Student Services,
		</p>
		<p>
			The new interface that you just announced is terrible.
			Is there a way to go back to the old one?
			If not, here are some issues in need of fixing.
		</p>
		<p>
			First, it used to be that the student portal link was available at the top of the classroom website.
			After your update though, we have to log in to get that link.
			The student portal is on an entirely different website, which means now that you&apos;ve hidden the link to it behind the log in wall, we have to log in *twice* to reach the student portal, for no good reason.
			I was dealing with that while checking on course registration requests between terms.
		</p>
		<p>
			Second, your upper navigation menu is broken now.
			It used to be that the categories were laid out across the top, and hovering over them showed the options.
			Now, there&apos;s a single menu item labelled &quot;MENU&quot;.
			Hovering does nothing.
			Clicking does nothing.
			My guess is that you transitioned from a CSS-based menu to a JavaScript-based menu.
			Not everyone is willing or even *able* to have JavaScript enabled though.
			This is a *HUGE* downgrade in terms of usability and accessibility.
			Personally, I disable JavaScript when school is in session for one simple reason: if I don&apos;t, the classroom website *EATS MY COURSEWORK*, a problem I&apos;ve complained about in the past and that you&apos;ve refused to fix.
			Because you won&apos;t fix that very nasty bug, having JavaScript enabled isn&apos;t an option for me while school is in session.
		</p>
		<p>
			Third, instead of being able to switch which course I&apos;m looking at from the menu, I have to go back to the root of the website, which is a pain, as the option is no longer available from the top of the page.
			I&apos;m guessing that might be fixed if the menu was fixed, but I don&apos;t know for sure what options are available in the menu.
		</p>
		<p>
			Thank you,<br/>
			~ Alex Yst
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		The letter&apos;s pretty much a repeat of what I just said, as I wrote it all not planning to contact the school.
		As for my anger and frustration, I just woke up in a sour mood today.
		I think it&apos;s because I know today&apos;s the day I go back to my redacted school life.
		I don&apos;t like being censored.
		It&apos;s very emotionally-draining, and as a result, I no longer enjoy my coursework.
		This noxious school has sucked the joy of learning out of me, and when school is in session, it drains me of my love of life.
	</p>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I learned that the water quality in two of Springfield&apos;s rivers (including one of the most major in the area) and one creek are impaired.
			Air quality was a bit bad a few years ago, but the latest shown measurements show good air quality.
			At least, it says that in <strong>*one*</strong> of the data boxes.
			Another data box says we have a lot of formaldehyde in the air, which certainly isn&apos;t good.
			99.8% of Oregon&apos;s energy is from renewable resources.
			Our power plants aren&apos;t putting out much carbon dioxide either, but we do have quite a bit coming from our waste-handling and our paper industry.
			No national priority issues are present in the area, but at the same time, no community resources for environmental protection were listed as present in the area either (United States Environmental Protection Agency, n.d.).
		</p>
		<p>
			I found it surprising that the Willamette river is having water quality issues.
			I&apos;ve never thought about it being contaminated or something, and it looks fine when you look at it visually.
			That said, pollutants aren&apos;t often visible with the naked eye, and I don&apos;t often go down to the river and inspect the wildlife; I only see it as I pass over the bridge when biking to the next city over.
			The seemingly-rising air quality surprised me for sure.
			I think of air quality as something that we continue to degrade through our mistreatment of the air, but not as something that can actually be improved.
			I always think of how we need to stop making it worse, but nature actually can reverse some of the damage as long as we don&apos;t damage things quicker than nature can keep up with.
			Formaldehyde being our biggest air pollutant was a bit of a surprise as well; I attribute that issue to the smokers.
			We have many smokers around here, and formaldehyde is one of the main toxins in cigarettes.
			The high level of renewable energy use surprised me, but only because it covered my whole state.
			On my half of the state, we have many rivers, which we use for hydroelectric power.
			My city&apos;s power company puts little facts on their bills, and a while back, they told us about how the power they provide us is mostly renewable.
			However, the other half (more than half, actually) of my state is a desert.
			Without our rivers, it&apos;s surprising that they&apos;re using renewable energy as well.
			Either we&apos;re supplying them energy from here or they&apos;re using some other source, such as wind or sun.
			Renewable power sources tend to be the ones that don&apos;t involve burning stuff from the ground though, so it&apos;s not at all surprising that our power plants aren&apos;t putting out much CO<sub>2</sub>.
			I&apos;m always astonished about how much people throw out, so it&apos;s not too surprising that our waste-handling is putting carbon into the air.
			The surprising one for me was our paper industry.
			We produce a lot of wood, so it makes sense we&apos;d produce a lot of paper.
			I&apos;d never thought of paper production being a heavy source of carbon emissions though.
			I also found it astonishing that we don&apos;t have any noted environmental protection resources here.
			There are a lot of wasteful people here, but there&apos;re also a lot of us that care for our planet; especially in the next city over from me, Eugene.
			To not even see one pro-environmental resource here defied expectations.
		</p>
		<p>
			For the waste-related carbon, we need to cut down on what we throw out.
			For example, at my workplace, only a select few of us recycle anything.
			Almost all of us instead just put tin cans and plastic bottles into the garbage dumpster.
			It&apos;s nuts, but people are too lazy to care.
			We need to find a way to convince them to care.
			For the formaldehyde in the air, we need to be more convincing in educating youth not to take up smoking.
			We should also get some sort of resource for environmental protection set up.
			From a report linked to by this overview, it seems that we&apos;re violating the standards set by the Clean Water Act in regards to each and every one of our rivers (Oregon Environmental Council, 2007).
			I didn&apos;t have time to research this act tonight, but this is a set of standards to be measured against, giving us a target we should reach in regards to our handling of water.
			I&apos;m not sure what to do about the paper industry.
			We can cut back on paper use, but paper&apos;s still an important part of modern life.
			I guess maybe we need to find greener ways to produce it.
		</p>
		<p>
			The two main things I learned from the United Nations report on my country, the United States, is that as of 2015, we has 1514 threatened species and that as of 2012, we were collecting 227 604 000 tonnes of municipal waste (United Nations Statistics Division, 2016).
			Ostensibly, that second statistic was a per-year statistic, but the report doesn&apos;t actually specify.
			These statistics show that we, as a country, are very hard on the environment and should really do something about it.
			However, the report also says that as of 2014, 0% of our electricity was renewable.
			I find that <strong>*incredibly*</strong> difficult to believe.
			It&apos;s true that much of our country&apos;s energy comes from non-renewable resources.
			We&apos;re terrible.
			However, certain sections of the country derive almost all of their energy from renewable resources.
			There sections <strong>*must*</strong> make up more than a percent of the country&apos;s total, so even rounding, it shouldn&apos;t be zero.
			Furthermore, it&apos;s been this way for a while.
			For example, Oregon didn&apos;t suddenly go from almost no renewable energy to nearly 100% renewable energy after 2014.
			Our dams are much older than that; they existed since before I was born.
			In fact, I don&apos;t even think the they were set up because of a push for renewable energy; that came later.
			We&apos;ve derived most of our (Oregon&apos;s, not the United States&apos;) energy from our rivers because that&apos;s what we&apos;ve got: water.
			Especially before the damage of fossil fuel use was found, people chose resources to use based mostly on availability.
		</p>
		<p>
			I guess the main thing I can contribute to the topic of environmental issues is that we&apos;re making the problem exponentially worse because of our expanding population.
			We really need to stop creating so many new people and cut back our population a bit.
			Or a lot, really.
			Personally, I&apos;m never having children, but I don&apos;t expect everyone to commit to that.
			If people could have no more than one child each, our population could slowly decline to a more-reasonable level.
			That is to say, if couples had no more than one child <strong>*together*</strong>, not <strong>*each*</strong>, we could cut back on the number of people messing up the planet until we were at a more-reasonable population level, then we could switch to keeping the population level about steady.
			We don&apos;t necessarily need to go extinct or anything, but we need to keep in mind that we&apos;re not the only life form, or even the only animals, on the planet.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Oregon Environmental Council. (2007). River Survey. Retrieved from <a href="http://oeconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cleaner-rivers-report.pdf"><code>http://oeconline.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cleaner-rivers-report.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				United Nations Statistics Division. (2016, December). Environment Statistics Country Snapshot: United States of America. Retrieved from <a href="https://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/envpdf/Country_Snapshots_Dec_2016/United%20States%20of%20America.pdf"><code>https://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/envpdf/Country_Snapshots_Dec_2016/United%20States%20of%20America.pdf</code></a>
			</p>
			<p>
				United States Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). MyEnvironment | US Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved from <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/myenv.html?minx=-123.08005&amp;miny=43.99133&amp;maxx=-122.96005&amp;maxy=44.11133&amp;ve=11,44.05133,-123.02005&amp;pText=97477"><code>https://www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/myenv.html?minx=-123.08005&amp;miny=43.99133&amp;maxx=-122.96005&amp;maxy=44.11133&amp;ve=11,44.05133,-123.02005&amp;pText=97477</code></a>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="laptop">
	<h2>New laptop computer</h2>
	<p>
		Having looked around for Debian laptops online yesterday and today, one company seems like they&apos;re the most likely to use my money well: Think Penguin.
		I don&apos;t fully understand their project, but they&apos;re working on improving the computer situation in the software freedom world.
		My understanding is that the project&apos;s goal is to build a <a href="https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68">tiny computer that has no planned obsolescence, runs free software, has no back doors, and can have its components easily and affordably replaced</a> if they end up broken or the user needs better parts for their computing needs.
		This tiny computer then fits into a huge (compared to the size of the computer) case that gives it a more-usable size, such as that of a laptop or something that can plug into a monitor and keyboard.
		I don&apos;t understand the details, so I&apos;m not sure if this is a computer that&apos;d be what I need it to be, and besides, it&apos;s not quite available yet anyway.
		Still, money paid to that company is more likely to do good than money paid to another company; I think I&apos;ll get their <a href="https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-z-gnulinux-laptop">Penguin Z</a> once the credit card arrives.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="ranch">
	<h2>Ranch dressing</h2>
	<p>
		With the new laptop chosen, a price tag value is now known.
		It&apos;s unfortunately above the amount I need to put on the new card, which means there&apos;s no longer a reason to hold off on other purchases.
		I went ahead and bought the ingredients for ranch dressing and made a tiny batch.
		It&apos;s not bad, but it could use some fine-tuning.
		For now, it&apos;s an acceptable substitute.
		I made a larger batch later, and it came out much better.
		I&apos;m not much of a chef though, so I don&apos;t even have any measuring spoons.
		It&apos;s only by odd chance that I have bowls that are marked to double as measuring cups.
		This country doesn&apos;t use the global standard (metric) measuring units though, so I can&apos;t buy measuring spoons in person.
		I&apos;ve had to order some online.
		Once I can properly measure ingredients, I&apos;ll have a better chance of adjusting the ingredient rations though, and once I&apos;ve found a good balance, a way to actually record that ratio.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
